Animals at Work and Play, Their Activities and Emotions
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ANIMALS llftufl tHEJR. .ACTIVITIES .AND BMOTj\CW6 O.J. ORNISH 3S76 >, i 5 t tof be on S; ays ai lan tt for BOSTON ved in ed, nc All be PUBLIC ess th ear m LIBRARY iry or be re ru- ar iok nc the lit ed tO MJV uuiai.au. 12. Pamphlets and magazines are subject to the same rules as books, except that unbound magazines shall be kept one week only. 41 <y ^ CLARKE CO I lU5||Stationers Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from Boston Public Library http://www.archive.org/details/animalsatworkplaOOcorn ANIMALS AT WORK AND PLAY a —— — — — WORKS BY C. J. CORNISH The Naturalist on the Thames. With Thirty- eight Illustrations. Demy 8vo, Js. 6d. "It is a most fascinating volume, and is illustrated in a manner worthy of the text." Scotsman. = Animals of To Day : Their Life and Conversation. With Illustrations from Photographs by C. Reid. 6s. " Quite one of the brightest books of popular natural history which have appeared in recent years." Leeds Mercury. Nights with an Old Gunner, and other Studies of Wild Life. With Sixteen Illustrations. 6s. ' ' Cannot fail to be interesting to any lover of wild nature. The illustrations are numerous and excellent." Pall Mall Gazette. Wild England of To=Day, and the Wild Life in It. With Illustrations. Third Edition. 6s. " Those of us who are left in town in the dull days will seem, in reading these pages, to sniff the fresh sea-breezes, to hear the cries of the sea-bird and the songs of the wood-bird, to be conscious of the murmuring stream and waving forests and all the wild life that is therein." StJames's Gazette. Life at the Zoo. Notes and Traditions of the Regent's Park Gardens. With Illustrations. Fifth Edition. 6s. " Without a single dull page." World. Seeley & Co. Ltd., 38 Great Russell St., London. <o C PC o o Q P-. ' ANIMALS AT WORK AND PLAY THEIR ACTIVITIES AND EMOTIONS BY C J. CORNISH Author of 'Life at the Zoo^ ' Wild England of To-Day,' 1 The Naturalist on the Thames,' &*c. With Illustrations THIRD EDITION London SEELEY & CO. LIMITED 38 GREAT RUSSELL STREET 1904 QL151 .C9 PREFACE In a previous book, 'Life at the Zoo,* the writer gave the result of some experiments showing the tastes and preferences of animals for colour, music, and perfumes. The following notes deal with some of the more general activities and emotions of their every-day life. Routine, as M. George Leroy re- marked in his ' Lettres sur Les Animaux, is the main feature in their existence ; but this routine embraces a very wide range of practical effort. Considering the difference of their equipment contrasted with that of man, they secure a large share of happiness and comfort, judged from the animal point of view. Most of the papers were originally contributed to the Spectator, to whose Editors the Author has to offer his renewed thanks for permission to publish them in consecutive form. C. J. CORNISH, Orford House, Chisivick Mall. CONTENTS PAGE Animals' Beds, i Animal Sleep, 8 Animals' Toilettes, 16 Animals in Society, 23 The Animal Dislike of Solitude, 3i Animal Etiquette, 39 Military Tactics of Animals, . 47 Animal Courage, . 56 The Animal Sense of Humour,. 68 The Emotion of Grief in Animals, 77 Animals at Play, . 85 Animals in Pageants, 95 The Soaring of Birds, . 102 vii viii CONTENTS PAGE Animals in Rain, . no Birds Lost in Storms, . .118 What Animals See, . .126 Animal Industries, . 135 'Sweating Bees,' ...... 143 The Re-Domestication of the African Elephant, . 150 Animals in Sickness, . .158 Animal 'Materia Medica/ . .168 The Length of Animal Life at the Zoo, . .176 The Limit of Size in Modern Animals, . 181 Dangerous Animals of Europe, . 189 The Mystery of Migration, . .197 Mr Seebohm's Discovery, .... 207 The Problem of Permanent Arctic Life, . .215 The Conditions of Animal Domestication, . 223 Sanctuaries for Wild Birds, .... 232 The Invisible Food of Fishes, .... 240 The Animal View of Captivity, . 248 Household Pests, ...... 256 Recent Rat Lore, ..... 264 A Boom in Animal Life, ..... 272 CONTENTS IX PAGE The Modern Art of Birdsnesting, • 283 Homes for Wild Birds, . 291 The Basis of Animal Myth, • 299 Omens from Birds, • 307 The Wild Boy of Pindus, 315 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Prairie Dogs making Their Beds, Frontispiece 12 A Sleeping Lion, . The Woodcock's Toilet, . 16 Social Sparrows, . 36 Hanuman Monkeys with a Sentinel, 52 The Rajah's Dromedaries at Jeypore, 98 An Aged Bison, • 176 A Zebra in Harness, • 226 Wild -Fowl on Langmere, Norfolk, • 232 Kangaroos in Lord Rothschild's Parkk at Tring, . 250 A Hawk killing a Wild Duck, • 280 Stock Dove's Nest, . 292 ANIMALS AT WORK AND PLAY ANIMALS' BEDS Birds which make such elaborate nests for their young, seldom seem to think of making beds for themselves to sleep in on winter nights.* This con- tradiction is the more surprising because many animals do make, or own, or appropriate beds. Some, like the prairie-dogs, make a fresh one every night ; and almost all that possess a bed at all, are vastly fussy, important, jealous, and particular about this their only article of household furniture. Prairie-dogs ought to take the place of the stupid guinea-pigs as pets, if only because they throw away their old bed every day, and make a new one. The sight of the prairie-dogs making up their beds on winter afternoons is the funniest scene in * Wrens are an exception to the rule. They habitually sleep, during the * winter, in the unlined spare ' nests built in spring. 2 ANIMALS AT WORK AND PLA Y the Zoo. There are several sets of these genial little fellows in the Gardens, two or three in a cage, each of which is supplied with a sleeping-box in one corner, while every other day a few handfuls of fresh straw are put in. In the morning, the prairie- dogs carry every bit of their last night's bed out of the box, and throw it out into the cage. They then eat their breakfast, and spend the day in playing about, staring visitors out of countenance, cramming long pieces of straw into their mouths and pouches, and nibbling carrots. About three o'clock, when the days are short, they suddenly recollect that they have not made their beds, and at once set to work in a hurry to get it done before dark. As the closing-bell rings at dusk, and that is the inoment at which the prairie-dogs earnestly desire to be in bed, it almost seems, to anyone who watches them, as if they knew the time and were waiting for the * curfew ' before turning in. But bed-making with them is a very serious matter. Common straw, dragged in just as it is, does not suit them at all. It has all to be cut up to a certain length, and ' then carried in in bundles and made up ' inside. Each prairie-dog sits up on end, and crams straw into its mouth in a most dreadful hurry, holding the straws across and breaking them off on each side with its paws, exactly as sewing-maids indulge in the bad habit of break- ANIMALS' BEDS 3 ing cotton with their teeth.* As soon as the prairie- dog has filled its mouth till it cannot hold any more, it drops on all-fours and gallops off into the sleeping-box, arranges the cut straw, and rushes out again for a fresh supply. Each seems to watch the others severely, as they sit up straw-cutting, to see that they do not shirk. From time to time they all jump into the air and bark, as if suddenly projected upwards by a spring in the boards of the floor. Dormice also make beds, though they are not so particular as the prairie-dogs about a change of blankets. When wild, they often fit a roof to an old bird's nest, and fill the inside with moss and wool, in which they curl up and sleep through the winter. But when kept in a warm house, only the bed needs to be provided. The best selection of bedding by a dormouse which the writer has known was made by one which had escaped, and remained for some weeks in the house before being recaptured. When winter wraps were once more coming into season, some jackets were taken out of a drawer, and under the astrachan collar of one of these the dormouse was found fast * In the spring of 1896, Mr Jannach kindly presented the writer's wife with a prairie-dog. It preferred sleeping under some heavy piece of furniture to using its own bed. If any pieces of paper or string had fallen behind a bureau or chest of drawers, it carefully carried them out and laid them on the carpet, treating them as ' old bedding.' It burrowed into a sofa among the springs, where it would bark when anyone sat down. Two others, the writer hears, burrowed into a chest of drawers in a house, and tore up dresses to make beds. —' 4 ANIMALS AT WORK AND PLA Y asleep, in a bed which it had nibbled out in the cloth, with the fur on the top for a blanket. Another and much larger hibernating animal—the badger takes a quantity of grass in to make its bed in the winter, and removes this when it comes out more freely in the spring. But the oddest fancy of the badger in bed is that it actually sleeps on its head.